The best thing about making things is when they escape and develop a life of their own. The Workshop System escaped from me last month at the Brompton Cemetery Chapel in West London. Over two days, Ronnie and Sonnie from White Noise took a room full of creative people, mostly non-musicians. They starting with zero experience of synths, modular or music making, but at the end of the day everyone performed solo for 5 minutes each, playing with oscillators, filters, the contact mic, program cards and most of all with the incredible acoustics of the space. I loved it, and if you have an idea and want to use the Loan Systems, get in touch.
Here’s 25 minutes of me at the Crux Festival in April, talking about the design process for the Workshop System.
On Saturday 6 September I’ll be in sunny Whitstable doing a one day workshop with Coastal Electronauts about collaboration, creative experimentation and learning to use small modular synths - not a million miles away from the White Noise event above, suitable for complete beginners or experts. Sign up here
After a brief period out of stock, Workshop Systems are back on sale at Thonk. If you’re not up for building the system yourself, Thonk are selling pre-built systems on demand, just email support@thonk.co.uk
If you’re in the European Union, you can also buy kits from the excellent people at Exploding Shed, although you might have to be quick, they seem to be going fast. They also have the 2mb and 16mb blank cards.
Sheep is the incredible new program card from dessertplanet, creator of Goldfish, BYO Benjolin and Fifths. Details in the description of the video above. “It's a granular processor. It might look like Clouds from a distance but when you get closer it is its own weird thing! It pitch shifts, it stretches time, and more.” The video is fantastic, and it’s set me off listening to Shabbazz Palaces “for … creative use of lo-fi time stretching that inspired this.”
A crack international team of Workshop System users including Depeche Mode producer Gareth Jones and Twists developer Tom Waters have discovered that you can write Program Cards from an iPad using an app called ES File Explorer. And you have a Workshop System but haven’t used the blank program card yet, here’s a quick video to explain how to use it and where to find new program card programs.
Mostly, July and August seems to be inspiring people to get out and make music:
Lovely chilled Turing Machine sequences in the sunshine from johaneklund.io
Recordings of ice cracking, warped perhaps through Sheep(?) from SimonSound
A noisy duet between a Workshop System and a Shortwave Radio from Hardworking Families
A beautiful snippet of WS + MengQi Wingie from Matt Mills
A cozy duet between a Workshop System and a rainstorm from Dave Bewick
A blippy duet between a WS and an O-Coast from Nobuhio Nakayama
Finally finally, if you bought a Workshop System Kit but haven’t put it together yet, do get in touch if you need any advice, support or help. I might run an online build workshop if that would be useful.
Thanks for reading, see you next month,
Tom